


Baking and Camping

by StillTicksAway



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Gen, Jade and Rose are a couple, but that is in no way a focus of this piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 22:16:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3150266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StillTicksAway/pseuds/StillTicksAway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two drabbles.  Jane teaches baking.  Jade takes her friends camping. What's better than this, girls being gals?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baking and Camping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mypointisdolphins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mypointisdolphins/gifts).



==> Jane, teach your friends, old and new, about cakes

 

It is a challenge worth trying, at the very least. 

Teaching baking could be done conservatively, or it can be done with everything: flours, sugars, vanilla, leavening agents, yogurts and creams, and a veritable cornucopia of decorations. 

Luckily, your house is always well stocked.

Roxy greets you with an enthusiastic hug that is tight and long. Roxy is good at hugs, and gets them in with frequency.  Jade’s hug is also firm, but shorter.  Rose’s hug is short and light.  The two of you haven’t had much time to get to know each other, what with your being brainwashed and her being hung over and/or dead.  She’s trying, in this post game world, and so are you.

You point out where everything is, telling them you’ll be happy to tell them again. It is a lot of information. When you get to “leavening agents,” Jade perks up, so you explain. “Baking soda needs something with it, like yogurt or buttermilk.  Baking powder is 2 parts cream tartar, 1 part baking soda.”

Roxy brandishes the two white power’s containers.  “Sounds like baking soda needs an acid.” 

“An acid!” Jade responds excitedly. 

From there, they launch into a discussion of the chemical properties of getting a cake to rise, something you’ve not thought about in quite those words. Given how their noses are progressively raised higher and higher into the air, the accents (Welsh?) they’re putting on, and the excessive science jargon, it is all in good fun.

You watched on until they give the same, “Quite, quite, yes!” hmming and hawing at each other, before setting out plans to make a very large, three layer cake.  They snag the recipe card, and insist that they can handle it themselves. 

Rose, who has decided on cupcakes, does not seem confused at all.

“Could you follow that?” you ask.

“Not entirely,” she says with a smirk.  “I’ve picked up on more science in Jade’s company, but I myself am not a scientist.” She mixes by hand, slowly shifting in dry ingredients to wet even with a mixer available.  She is still mixing when Roxy and Jade put their layers into the bottom oven.  When you offer to help her, she accepts, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

“How is that going with Jade?” you ask. 

“Better than my previous relationship.  Different universes is too long distance, even for me,” she says, her lips thinning out just a bit.  “But Jade is…nice.” She smiles again.

“Roxy tells me you’ve adopted another cat,” you say, changing the subject.

“I was fine growing up with one,” Rose frowns, then seeing your expression, gives a laugh. “She is very good at adopting strays. I’m sure that will be the reason for the end of our living situation.  Thankfully she’s agreed to fix them all.”

“What are you at?”

“Seven. It still feels like an empty house.”

Carefully, you add, “You would prefer that?”

Rose gives a long “hmm” as she carefully picks out cupcake sleeves for her tray. One pink, another blue, another purple zebra stripes.  “I grew up with my mother for company, and she had a tendency to be absent, even surrounded by wilderness, with no where to go.  Roxy grew up with carapaces, even if…her mother was not there, she never lacked for company.”

She puts the cupcakes into the top oven. 

“The house looks enough like the one I grew up in, but it isn’t.  It’s uncanny.”

You, as the only player left with your original home and parent, don’t have a lot to add to this conversation.  It’s something you and Roxy have discussed at length, where all of you are living, where you should be living.

“But you’re still there,” you say to Rose, as you’ve said to Roxy. 

“For now,” Rose says. Her deadpan reminds you of Dirk, and if she were Dirk, you would drag this out more.  But her tone was final, so you don’t push it. “How are you readjusting to your post game life?” 

“It is nice being an heiress to a corporation that’s not entirely evil.”

Rose laughs, turning away from you. “But of course, you must know,” she turns back in a dramatic sweep of a gesture, a green W held up to her nose with both fingers, eyebrows high, voice noticeably gruffer, “all corporations are evil.”

You blanch at the display for a second, before doubling over laughing.  “You’re the evil corporation?” you ask, incredulously?

“Of course I am, can’t you tell by my evil mustache?  And evil voice?” She lowers the W. “I admit, my deliverance was rather heavy handed.”

“Not at all,” you insist, “only, a true evil corportation,” you decaptchlogue and affix a long, curly mustache, “must look the part.”

“You are clearly much more suited for that role, given your costume selection.”

You lend Rose a mustache. Not your most evil, but second easily, especially with the voice she has put on.  The two of your continue to banter in “evil CEO” voices. Jade and Roxy remove their cake from the oven and start decorating it when Rose removes her cupcakes. To keep up with the theme, you and her decorate them with dollar signs and mustaches.

“Excuse me misters and misters evil corporate men,” says Roxy with a cough, giant cake in hand. “We’re wondering if we could get a baking lord’s opinion on a cake.”

She offers it to you, and you take it.  It is covered with a pink base, and has a bit of a tilt to it.  The bordering piping is in various sizes in green.  The drawing on top seems to be a robot with roller wheels on its bottom? Interesting choice.

“Better than my first cake, without a doubt,” you say, honestly.  “I would have helped with decorating, you know.  A demonstration—”

“Pssh,” Roxy gestures. “It was all fun to try it out. As long as it tastes good.”

“Would you do the honors of taste testing?” Jade interjects.

Dad did the same by you, so you are happy to accept. 

When you pierce the cake to make a slice, it explodes over you.  You blink, and sputter as Roxy and Jade howl with laugher. 

Chemistry, of course.

Your trickster’s gambit plummets.

Rose hands you a dish towel, which your use on your glasses.  Her right side, like all your front, is covered in what looks like mud, with a splatter of pink and green here and there.

Then she hands you one of her cupcakes. 

“It seems our competitors are attempting a corporate takeover.”  She picks up another cupcake and strokes her mustache.

“We can’t have that,” you say, and wind up a pitch. 

Things devolved into a regular food-flinging melee from there. 

Thankfully, everyone helps to clean up once it is done.

 

==> Jade, take your friends, old and new, camping

  

After Jane’s sharing of skills, you decided to help with your own.  Not the camping is a skill, but it is something fun to do. Roxy has enthusiastically declared that this will be a great time.  Jane has never been camping before, but wants to give it a try. Rose is Rose.  You love her dearly for participating.  You know she likes her outdoors with indoors nearby.

While you could teleport everyone to the campsite, you want this to be the whole experience, so teleport 1 kilo to the spot, and hike to it.

Rose and Roxy set up tents, two of them.  One of the conditions Rose laid out for this expedition was her getting a private tent with you. You wonder if the night has only snuggling ahead.  Probably. She doesn’t like an audience.

Jane brings back a log that’s thicker than you are for firewood, and she barely breaks a sweat carrying it.  While she could have captchlogued it, you are still impressed.

Unsurprisingly, when you ask if anyone wants to hike Rose pulls out a book, and offers to watch camp. You give her a peck before hitting the trail. 

The path is up and up, to the top of a plateau, with the plant life changing as you go along. By the top of the ridge everyone is huffing with strain from the thinner air.  The plants are shorter here, prickly and thin, and you take a moment to teleport a graft back home.  It should last until you get back.  The view, down into a valley, is brilliant.

You have hotdogs cooked on a magicks lit fire.  You were vegan until you Bec-ed yourself.  Now you crave it. There are smores too.  Not that you grew up with them, but you have since learned that they are a quintessential camping experience.  Research indicated drinking is too, but, for present company, you were alright without that. 

Late at night, when Rose is softly snoring, you feel a shift of…not space around you. Yes, that is exactly how you would describe it, an absence of an absence of space.  You float around in the darkness to keep from stumbling over something, and find Roxy perched in a high branch of a tall tree, gazing up.

“Couldn’t sleep?” you ask, sitting beside her. The branch gives a creek, but feels steady. 

“Got up to pee, but then saw this.” She gives a soft sigh.

You follow her gaze up and see the space, stars are in every direction, even if you can’t see them for how far away they are.  “They’re beautiful.”

“They?” Roxy asks.

“The stars,” you say, confusion edged into your voice.  “You can’t see them like I can. Witch of Space.  But they are beautiful.”

Roxy gives a thoughtful, “Hmm,” then asks,  “What’s out there?” she points.

You follow her finger.   “A red giant, burning brightly.”

“And after that?”

You squint. “A some dwarf stars. One of them has a planet with life. Hmm…can’t tell if it is intelligent though.”

“After that? What’s the farthest thing?”

You close your eyes. You’ve done this before, but you’ve never had to explain it to someone.  “Not an edge or a wall, but a limit. No Furthest Ring.  And if you stare out enough, space seems to bend back into itself. “

“A limit?” Roxy laughs. “For me, it is cracks and veins,” she gestures, “in drops until _it opens_. Stars are pretty, but I’m the Rogue of Void.  Your limit. I was admiring the thing beyond it. Usually can’t hang out there too long. But out here…”

“Don’t you live in the wood?” you ask.

“But they’re my woods, and I have things to do.  Nothing to do here but fall into the void.”

“Mostly void,” you’ll relent. “But partially stars.”


End file.
